> More knobs is almost always a sign of lazy thoughtless design.
I'll put forth an economic justification: specialization. Experts are happy to cope with the explosions of features, and so happy to take a tradeoff of less usable software if their one additional feature is in there that they're willing to pay a premium for it. They spend a lot of time with the software, learning the keyboard shortcuts and tuning knobs.
Conversely, novices like you and me don't like any of that. We want to get shit done, even if that shit isn't exactly what we wanted, or held to the high standards of a professional. The software they need is easier to write -- you don't have to implement obscure features, and you don't have to make the UI cope with all those features.
So the fact that Photoshop exists isn't a sign of lazy design, but of a market for professional users whose niche is being catered to.
Also, the dataset the paper in question focuses on is Apache httpd, MySQL, and Hadoop. These are not technologies for average users or the general public. These are clearly the domain of experts. It's not entirely clear to me that the fact that few people use given Apache config option means I shouldn't be allowed to change it. Sure, most Chef recipes don't use ModRewrite rules, but that doesn't mean I would be better served if Apache removed those knobs.
Building software for novices with simple ui is much harder than building software for experts with a gazillion settings. Where there are multiple ways to design something, you can punt the problem to the user and add a setting, or think hard about how the software will be used and figure out a settingless design. The second strategy is definitely the harder path.
> Building software for novices with simple ui is much harder than building software for experts with a gazillion settings.
IME, people advocating for simple UI end up advocating for the removal of features. That's often fine, but it's also why people like Torvalds bounce between desktop environments as things are Simplified with no secret handshake to undo them.
Even the research suggests that over 50 percent of Apache config setting points can be removed without affecting more than 1 percent of the customer base. I'm not clear if that means each feature is 1 percent or 1 percent total. It's also not clear how they can feasibly disentangle people who use obscure features and don't need help with it. (Also, I'd love to see concrete suggestions for improvement from that pool to better understand what counts as obscure here.)
That said, the Apache config has plenty of room for improvement. Why do we have to write chef scripts to calculate MPM settings and avoid OOM'ing the machine?
I'll put forth an economic justification: specialization. Experts are happy to cope with the explosions of features, and so happy to take a tradeoff of less usable software if their one additional feature is in there that they're willing to pay a premium for it. They spend a lot of time with the software, learning the keyboard shortcuts and tuning knobs.
Conversely, novices like you and me don't like any of that. We want to get shit done, even if that shit isn't exactly what we wanted, or held to the high standards of a professional. The software they need is easier to write -- you don't have to implement obscure features, and you don't have to make the UI cope with all those features.
So the fact that Photoshop exists isn't a sign of lazy design, but of a market for professional users whose niche is being catered to.
Also, the dataset the paper in question focuses on is Apache httpd, MySQL, and Hadoop. These are not technologies for average users or the general public. These are clearly the domain of experts. It's not entirely clear to me that the fact that few people use given Apache config option means I shouldn't be allowed to change it. Sure, most Chef recipes don't use ModRewrite rules, but that doesn't mean I would be better served if Apache removed those knobs.